Label: The Vanishing Fabric Marker should not be used as a writing instrument for signing checks or any legal documents.

Product: W.H. Collins’ Vanishing Fabric Markers

(You just know that someone kited a check and in an effort to minimize responsibility,  tried to sue to blame the manufacturer.)

Label: Do not use while sleeping. (See above pic.)

Product: Vidal Sassoon hair dryer

(Look at the people around you; at work and at personal functions.  We all have that one person that we can easily visualize getting caught up in this situation.  Let’s not all stare at the blondes first.)  A true story on this subject: http://bit.ly/yw4jqM

Label: May cause drowsiness.

Product: Ambien  sleeping pills.

(Hey, the defense worked for Congressman Michael Kennedy [yes, of the...] while driving around under the influence of  Ambien.  The elevated blood alcohol level was also resultant from the pill’s hypnotic (clinical, not as in some hack in a magician’s cape) effect. )

Label: This product is not intended for use as a dental drill.

Product: Dremel Multipro’s rotary tools.

(This must have been an interesting customer service moment.)

Label: This product moves when used.

Product: Razor scooter

(Someone tried to use it as a cane and the obvious broken hip occurred.  Perhaps it’s just me, it usually is, but I presume that wheeled-objects will at some point, move.)

Label (on website): Do not eat.

Product: Apple‘s iPod shuffle.

(Apple being cute.  If someone did or does attempt to eat an iPod, s/he has much larger psychological issues to deal with than we can delve into on this post.)

Label: Do not use near power lines.

Product: Toilet Plunger

(I can’t envision a single scenario wherein these two items, a toilet plunger and a power line, could intersect.)

Label:  Do not use as an ice cream topping.

Product: Loreal Hair Coloring.

(Some teenie tiara seeker’s Mom left the catwalk strolling  tyke alone for a few minutes, hmmm?)

Label:  Not Dishwasher Safe

Product: RCA Television Remote Control.

(This person should never watch any TV show involving the following: flying superheroes, talking animals or body-switchers.  A tin foil hat for this person would also not be out of order.)

Label: Do not drive with sunshade in place. Remove from windshield before starting ignition.

Product:  Auto-shade Windshield Visor.

(Two things came immediately to mind when I read this. 1. NYS recently eliminated the eye-exam for driver’s license renewals, read: proactive defense and 2. AE’s infamous words: Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure of the former.)

Feel welcome to write-in and add to this list and please, do include your comments! We’ll print the best send-ins in our next post!

Our Operatives: Street smart, tech savvy (and often left head-scratching at what we see in reality.)

As always, be safe.

•Convict sues couple he kidnapped for not helping him evade police.  Read story.

•Man illegally brings gun into bar, gets injured in a fight, then sues bar for not searching him for a weapon. Read story.

•Young adults sue mother for sending cards without gifts and playing favorites.  Read story.

•Woman disagrees with store over 80-cent refund, sues for $5 million. Read story.

•Mom files suit against exclusive preschool over child’s college prospects.  Read story.

•Man suing for age discrimination says judge in his case is too old. Read story.

•Obese man sues burger joint over tight squeeze in booths.  Read story.

•Woman sues over movie trailer; says not enough driving in “Drive”.  Read story.

•Passenger’s lawsuit says cruise ship went too fast and swayed from side to side.  Read story.

•Mother sues Chuck E. Cheese – says games encourage gambling in children.  Read story.

Complete results of the poll can be found on www.FacesofLawsuitAbuse.org.

(Part II of our Top Ten 2012 Security and Investigations Predictions will continue in next week’s post.)

As always, stay safe.

1. Social networking redefining “privacy”.

Confidential user information is ending up online, in large part by the users themselves.  We’ve grown into a society that maintains a different attitude toward protecting and sharing information. We are now more likely to reveal personal data and unlikely to take steps to keep information restricted.  Within several years, privacy-conscious individuals will be in the minority.

2. Hackers will attack nontraditional targets.

To date, hackers’ goals have been mainly to steal money, obtain valuable data for resale, disrupt services and intimidate targets ranging from individuals to large corporations and governmental agencies.  The new hack attacks will now concentrate on network-connected systems, such as medical equipment, actively controlling devices from external locations by unauthorized users. (This may explain the decision to not enable online election voting  as within a networked system there is a 100% probability of its vulnerability to outside hacking attacks, which may include data interruption or manipulation.)

3. Smartphone and tablet platforms, especially Android, will suffer greater cybercriminal attacks.

As smartphone usage continues to grow worldwide, so will mobile platforms attacks. The Android platform, in particular, due to its open app distribution model, is and will continue to be, a favored cybercrminal’s target.

4. Virtual and cloud-based computing systems will encounter the same cybercriminal vulnerabilities as do physical systems.

The inevitable, using and or interacting with virtual and cloud-based computing systems, renders them just as vulnerable by conventional attack methods that hackers have used in the past.  They see no need to change their criminal methodology as virtual and cloud platforms are just as easy to attack as physical systems but more difficult to protect. The burden will thus fall on IT admins to secure their company’s critical data as they adopt these technologies.

5. Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) data breaches will dramatically increase.

The BYOD Era is here and, if anything, mobile device usage will only increase. As more and more corporate data is stored or accessed by mobile devices that are not fully controlled by IT administrators,  the likelihood of data loss incidents will rise.  The massive uptick expected in this area is directly attributable to improperly secured personal devices.

Just my thoughts:  In the past decade+, I’ve noticed the wide range of expertise among IT administrators.  Operating an entity’s internal information engine is one thing, securing it is an entirely different matter.  Given the cost that security breaches can and have caused, perhaps it is time to upgrade the post-certification requirements for IT admins.  Continuing education classes and annual re-certification may be viable solutions to the rapidly rising level of cybercriminality.

Our Operatives: Street smart; Tech savvy.

As always, stay safe.

Related articles

• Cyber criminals targeting mobile devices (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
• Cloud Computing: Predictions For 2012 (cloud-computing.learningtree.com)
• Social networking sites vulnerable to attacks in 2012 (thehindu.com)

Wishing our loyal readers, faithful clients and friends and family of all, a World of Peace in 2012.

Lina

Today, we will cover two areas:  1. How long are email addresses (by public email provider; i.e., Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and AOL) maintained if they are left inactive by their owners?  and 2. Are there anonymous email addresses one can use, for whatever legitimate (I am sure)  reason s/he might need to do so?

When will your inactive public email provider account expire?

Yahoo

• If you don’t login to your Yahoo email account at least once in 4 months.

Gmail

• Your account remains inactive for nine months.

Hotmail

• Your account’s period of inactivity reaches nine months.

AOL

• Account expiry on inactivity: six months.

How To Obtain An Anonymous Email Address.

Why one would desire or need an anonymous email is a question with too many variables to answer comprehensively, and, it is not the focus of this post.  Our objective is to provide a resources for the legitimate use of temporary and anonymous email.  We’ve repeatedly tested and after five years, continue to use, Guerilla Mail.  From their site:

Many services and web apps require you to sign up with a valid email address, and they usually check that by sending a verification email to your specified address, which, in turn, might contain a link that you need to visit for the sign up process to complete. While this seems authentic on the service’s part, most users feel uncomfortable in doing so because of the resultant plethora of spam and promotional emails that bombard your inbox. Guerrilla Mail is a web app that can solve your problem by creating a temporary email address. You can use these to receive verification and configuration emails, validate your address and rest assured that none of your personal details will be compromised as the app will discard your email address after one hour (default setting).

Every time you visit the website, it will automatically assign a random, @sharklasers.com email address that you can use for one hour. The email address will automatically expire after 60 minutes, during which you can read all emails received on this address. The one-hour limit can easily be increased using the Extend button to add an extra hour.

Once you’re done with signing up or accessing any website content, all you need to do is use the Forget Me button to remove your temporary inbox completely from Guerrilla Mail.

Our Operatives: Street smart, tech savvy.

As always, be safe.

Image via Wikipedia

The most frequently requested service  we receive is for subject locates, (e.g., a client has moved and neglected to give  his attorney forwarding contact information,  a transient witness needs to be interviewed, an heir to an estate located).

Regardless of the seemingly obvious ease of locating someone in our now technologically-enhanced transparent society, if a person wishes to remain unlocatable, they will. (I’ll refer back to this later in this article.)

The electronic tracking has arrived,  however.   One of the best tracking devices is a cell phone. Point in case, below is an excerpt from a June 3, 2011  NY Post article:

A 22-year-old Manhattan man was found, thirsty and weak, beside his BMW deep in swampy woods along an upstate parkway four days after he went missing.

State police say Thomas Wopat-Moreau, last seen at a Saturday night party in East Fishkill, was found by searchers Thursday in a secluded area near the Taconic State Parkway about 45 miles south of Albany (Gallatin, Columbia County). His car had swerved off the road early Sunday and flew 400 feet into the woods, leaving no trace behind.

Troopers said they were able to focus their search by a signal from Wopat-Moreau’s cell phone before it died.The tracking technique used by the state troopers is called pinging.

Pinging a cell phone is finding out the responding  cell tower to the phone.   This can be used to locate a person that has a cell phone.

Usually the information is provided by the cellular provider and one has to  have an account with them. In 911 systems, the location is broadcast with the call.   If a subject  is carrying a cell phone, the phone is constantly sending signals to the closest cell tower, even if the phone isn’t turned on. The location of the cell tower will tell you that the person is within a certain range. When the person moves,  they can be tracked by the  cell towers to which the signal is bounced to.

Cell phones now come equipped with GPS so a subject’s  exact location can be determined.  Even when the phone is turned off!! Also, the phones can be used as a listening device. It can be activated via a cell phone tower and law enforcement can listen to everything said within range of the cell phone.  Again, the phone doesn’t even have to be turned on.  The phone acts as a secret microphone.

More sophisticated ways of listening to people are being developed and many are already in use.  ONSTAR has been used to listen in on criminals by law enforcement.   The microphone for ONSTAR in one’s  car can be activated remotely so others can listen in to the in-vehicle conversation.

A GPS unit can obviously identify a subject’s location. However, a GPS can be disabled and is worthless to locators once the juice has been cut.

Cable boxes are also being used to listen in on people in their homes. The signal is sent over the same coax cable to the head-end where a server records conversations in range of the target.

An ounce of prevention…

As we’ve often  advised, if you are in a conference or client meeting or any other public situation in which you would like conversations to remain confidential, request that all cell phones be left outside of the room, including your own.  In high-level negotiations, it’s make sense for the opposition to hire professionals who can easily ping a cell phone and listen in on talks.

Preventative measures:

1. If you want to remain anonymous with a cell phone,  use a prepaid phone and don’t send in your information for a mail in rebate. If you do, the phone will then be registered to your name. If nobody knows your phone number or ESN number then they can’t trace your phone by cell towers.

2. Turn off the GPS.

3. As for ONSTAR,  most people in the know disconnect it.

(There isn’t much that can be done, short of removing the unit, regarding silencing your cable box.)

On a final note, in order to ping a cell phone, one has be authorized. Obviously, law enforcement is automatically qualified to request cell service providers to track phones, but so are investigators, bails bondsmen and several other professions.

Our Operatives: Street smart; Tech savvy.

As always, stay safe.

The Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) scanning systems are one of the newest law enforcement technologies. The system consists of cameras mounted on police cars, hooked up to a computer inside the vehicle.  License plates images are scanned and matched to a real-time centralized database. This database flags vehicles that have been identified as

• Stolen Vehicles
• Wanted for an Amber Alerts
• Expired Registration
• Expired Insurance
• Wanted as “Persons of Interest” for any investigation
• Suspended Driver’s License
• Outstanding Criminal Warrant
• Outstanding Municipal Taxes or other Fines and Fees
• Are Wanted for any other government purpose

The system is matched to the vehicle’s owner via a DMV database. So, you can just be driving along and find yourself pulled over by the police, not having committed any traffic violation.

How Many License Tags Can Be Scanned?

Short answer: thousands of tags per hour.  One police car parked on the side of a road can scan just about every car in sight, including one driving in the opposite direction at 70 miles an hour.  (No, the answer is not to drive 80 mph +.)

What Happens To The Scanned Images?

Every image is time, date and location saved.  Permanently.  So now reports of your driving locations (whether you were stopped or not) have become records and collected into various databases: those of state and local law enforcement, DMVs and the FBI‘s National Crime Information Center (NCIC).

The Problem, You Ask?

As more systems go online and interconnected across local, state and federal jurisdictions,  police can easily identify the touch points of any scanned tag’s vehicle location.

You can easily imagine the knock on your door if you (probably unknowingly… I allot the benefit of the doubt), stopped in front of  a known drug dealing location, parked by a wanted person’s vehicle or passed a toll directly after a person suspected of a crime.  BTW, how many times have you attended political events.  Call the cops, they’ll let you know.

The truth is that the use this placement data can be used as circumstantial evidence against you and we’ll soon find many innocent people in court, defending their drive down Main Street.

Aren’t These License Tag Scanners Violating My Rights??

No.  According to the law, you have no expectation of privacy while out in public.  This has already been through the courts which have upheld that police officers are allowed to randomly run license tags as they pass by.

In the case of United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Charles N. Matthews, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a “license plate was in plain view on the outside of the car” and hence, is “subject to seizure” because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

In the case of United States of America, Plaintiff v. Curtis Ellison, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held:

Thus, so long as the officer had a right to be in a position to observe the defendant’s license plate, any such observation and corresponding use of the information on the plate does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

These new ALRP scanning systems simply allow the scanning to be more comprehensive in the number of tags scanned and permanent. 

Bottom line.

Someone should be asking if any restrictions exist on the use of this data to check up on ordinary Joes and Janes, going about their regular business. 

BNI Operatives: A step ahead.

As always, stay safe.

“There are basically three techniques (utilizing brain responses v.  those that rely on a machine interpreting physical responses, i.e. the polygraph) that are currently used, and uncomfortably, the latter two, making their way into courts all over the world as “proof” of testimony veracity; NLP (neuro linguistic programming) , EEG (electroencephalogram) and the newest toy of the lie detection crowd: the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging).”  In Part I, we reviewed the oldest and most organic of the techniques: NLP, observing physical eye reactions of the defendant.

This week, we’ll look at:

EEG (electroencephalogram)

Indian court allows a brain scan into evidence.

Based on  a court ordered  EEG, the results were that ”Aditi Sharma…was charged with the murder of her former fiance Udit Bharati, based upon…brain scans that supposedly show she possessed first-hand memories of the murder.”

and

fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)

For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder.

(I specifically chose to spotlight the above case because of the considerable time that has transpired between when the fMRI test administered to the defendant in September, 2009, to the crimes he, allegedly,  committed in 1983.  Side note:  fMRIs in the Illinois case were allowed in the sentencing phase simply to display the defendant’s continual, long term brain deterioration, not measurable guilt as determined by crime recreation.)

Best summed up by Stanford bioethicist, Henry (Hank) Greeley:

“As we enter more fully into the era of mapping and understanding the brain, society will face an increasing number of important ethical, legal and social issues raised by these new technologies,” Mr. Greely, the Stanford bioethicist, and his colleague Judy Illes wrote last year in the American Journal of Law & Medicine.

If brain scans are widely adopted, they said, “the legal issues alone are enormous, implicating at least the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

“At the same time,” they continued, “the potential benefits to society of such a technology, if used well, could be at least equally large.”

Certain, still truly untested  methods (eeg, fmri, pet…) of lie detection yield very subjective results.  Lie detection is not akin to DNA evidence.  With these newer brain scanning techniques, there are too many factors that can cause false positives reactions (older memories, extremely empathetic predisposition…).  We need to tread careful lest what is at best a strong supposition be allowed as hard evidence.

UDPATE:

BNI Operatives: Street smart; web savvy.

As always, stay safe.

Related Articles

• MRI Lie Detectors (spectrum.ieee.org)
• Sex, Lies, and fMRIs (boingboing.net)
• Is this a neuro revolution? – Varsity (news.google.com)

There are basically three techniques (utilizing brain responses v.  those that rely on a machine interpreting physical responses, i.e. the polygraph) that are currently used, and uncomfortably, the latter two, making their way into courts all over the world as “proof” of testimony veracity; NLP (neuro linguistic programming) , EEG (electroencephalogram) and the newest toy of the lie detection crowd: the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging).  In Part I of this series, this week’s Bulletin will cover the oldest and machine-free of the techniques: NLP, using your eyes to see through another’s window to the soul.  First we’ll explain the 6 basic directions the eyes travel to when questioned or in thought and then there will be the video displaying these eye movements.

NLP – Visual Accessing Queues

The directions discussed in the video below refer to the direction in which the eyes go when answering a question, or thinking.

• Up and to the Left : Visually Constructed Images. Asking you to imagine a tremendous spider with fangs and wings.
• Up and to the Right : Visually Remembered Images. Asking you to picture your favourite food.
• Left : Auditory Constructed. What the sound of a  rock screaming may sound like? (assuming you haven’t heard one scream before of course)
• Right : Auditory Remembered. Kapa Kapa Moo Moo Hey!
• Down and to the Left : Kinesthetic. What did it feel like when you last had paper cut?
• Down and to the Right : Internal Dialogue. Talking to yourself. What should I do now? Where should I go?

Now for the video:

NOTE: This video was based on right-hand dominant people. For lefties, use reverse directions.

(We know that we will all consciously be eye-balling people for at least the next several days!)

BNI Operatives: A step ahead.

As always, stay safe.

Related Articles

• Mind-reading, lie-detection and telekinesis with fMRI and EEG – Science fact and fiction (psychologyinaction.org)
• MRI Lie Detectors (spectrum.ieee.org)
• Is this a neuro revolution? (thevarsity.ca)
• If You Want to Catch a Liar, Make Him Draw (psychologytoday.com)

As our readers know, we’ve been closely monitoring the new employment eligibility Self-Check service offered by the Homeland Security and the Social Security Administrations in conjunction with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as these agencies continue to roll out the employer-conducted hirability test, E-Verify,  for each employee.  Each new hire must pass E-Verify, which is accessed via and operated by, the  USCIS.  Self-Check is a free service that anyone can use from any computer to privately to check his/her ability to pass the E-Verify test.

While Self-Check is voluntary,  E-Verify is not.

From the USCIS site:

Then:

No one can require you to use Self Check to guarantee your work authorization. For example, it is unlawful for a current or potential employer to require you to provide them with proof of your positive Self Check result in order to keep, accept or be offered a job.

If an employer or potential employer asks you to run a Self Check query to prove that you are authorized to work in the United States, you should notify the Department of Justice, Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices.

Additionally, a positive Self Check result should not be a condition of membership into any group or organization, and is not to be required for receipt of any benefit, service, or good from a Federal, state or local agency or a private party.

Definition of E-Verify from the USCIS:

The problems, you ask?  I’ll point out one wraparound issue out of the many that exist.

1.  An employer must run E-Verify with 72 hours of the first date of pay of the new hire.

2. An employer cannot require that an employee pre-qualify him/herself via Self-Check prior to hire. (Information required for a Self-Check is similar to that provided on a credit check and would, presumably, only be known to the employee.  Wait for it…  The prospective employee can administer the Self-Check as many times as possible until s/he gets all of the answers correctly.)

3. If E-Verify concludes that an employee is authorized to work, it does not create a legal presumption that the employer has not violated immigration law.

Ok, so let’s see if we have this straight.  An employer can’t pre-check (via Self-Check) a potential employee’s employment  eligibility and s/he can’t request same of the potential new hire.  An employer must conduct the E-Verify check after the employee has been hired (read: paid) and even after the employee is greenlit to work by the government, the employer can still be held legally liable should the new hire’s employment eligibility turn out to be invalid.

Why does the employer still hold any potential liability for the new employee if the responsible federal agencies have all agreed that said employee has met the government-established employment criteria?

I’ll repeat myself from past posts I’ve authored on this topic.  Making employers de facto arms of law enforcement is not the way to go.  Ensuring effective employment eligibility  must begin at the government-issued I.D. level.

Kicking the ball back to employers is way too much interference with private business.

On a final note, if the potential employee is red flagged, the employer receives a “Tentative Non-Confirmation” notice as the government and employee try to work out any possible errors (more money out of the employers’ pockets).  At the second “Permanent Non-confirmation”, the employer is required to fire the new employee.  A) Many employers are not going to wait for the second notice to fire a Non-Confirm thereby spending more money on a person who may not be with the company next week an b) how much will this cost the old hires who are erroneously identified as Non-Confirms? Or is the cost of straightening that out absorbed by the employer?  (The government has already waived any financial, legal and discriminatory hire practice liability on its part regarding any E-Verify and Self-Check system errors.)

We’ll continue to keep an eye on this hiring process as developments warrant.

As always, be safe.

Related articles

• USCIS Launches Spanish-Language Version of E-Verify Self Check (globalthinkers.wordpress.com)
• The ICE-man cometh… (beaconbulletin.com)